Vantop - Snaptain SP7100S Drone with Remote Controller - Black

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The vast majority of our reviews come from verified purchases. Reviews from customers may include My Best Buy members, employees, and Tech Insider Network members (as tagged). Select reviewers may receive discounted products, promotional considerations or entries into drawings for honest, helpful reviews.

• Rated 4 out of 5 stars

  Nice for the price.

  • Incentivized
  • Verified Purchaser
  • My Best Buy® Member
  • Owned for 9 months

  Bought for husband for Christmas. He loved it. Loves the picture quality. Only down fall. After a year we had to buy another battery due to the original battery not keeping a charge.

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  Posted 2 years ago by TheMrsHarris

• Rated 5 out of 5 stars

  Way Better Than I Expected!

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  • Verified Purchaser
  • My Best Buy® Member
  • Owned for 1 month

  After reading reviews - mostly of DJI models as they seem to have +90% of the market - and trying to educate myself, I saw the Snaptain SP7100S advertised by Best Buy. From the description, it seemed almost too good for the price, but I went ahead and purchased it as my very first drone. I have to say, I'm immensely impressed! The feature set is so much better than I would expect at that price, and importantly, they didn't add features at the expense of the drone itself. The build quality is very high. Overall, I'm thrilled with my purchase, and would recommend it to anyone on a budget or just beginning in the drone world. NOTE: Although I gave 4 stars for battery life, range, and camera - after all, this isn't a $3000 drone - I give it 5 stars overall: battery, camera, range, build, etc., are so much better than should be expected for a $200 drone!

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  Posted 3 years ago by MichaelU

• Rated 4 out of 5 stars

  Nice mid-level drone, okay for even total novices

  • Tech Insider Network Member

  Having never piloted a drone before, the opportunity to trial the Snaptain SP7100S was approached with beginner’s mind, and no preconceived expectations. As I received my drone late November, the lack of warm, clear, calm weather proved to be somewhat of a limitation. Additionally, since I live midway between my town’s municipal airstrip, and the heliport of the local hospital, all the legal flying terrain is a bit of a drive for me. I had anticipated learning to fly at the local park’s ball field, but my preparation education steered me to the app B4UFly (which I highly recommend) and I quickly learned that the FAA had other ideas from my novice ignorance. Basically our small city is completely off limits for recreational airspace flying. The Snaptain 7100S is a weight of drone that requires it to be registered with the FAA, which is easy to do online. There is a short educational treatise to read and a few question exam to take online, to be granted a license (which costs $5 for a 3 year certificate). Also the drone needs to be marked with your license number, which can be just with a Sharpie on the body of the drone, or online sites will make you a sticker with your contact number and license number. Since the body of the drone was black, a Sharpie would not show up too well, so I sent off for the $3 stickers. All these details are outlined at the online "FAA DroneZone" (just do a web search, and it will be easily located) and they walk you through everything you need. The 7100S comes in a very nicely constructed, durable carrying case, with custom molded cradles for the drone, the hand controller, and areas for the manual, extra propellors, and the charging bricks (USB powered) for the drone and the controller. The camera takes a microSD card (not included in the package, but under $10), which is pretty much the standard for amateur drones. In my reading, a 32 Gb card was plenty large for most of the photography/videography you might do. The card needs to be initialized to a Windows format, from what I read, and since I only have Macintosh computer, I found an app that would do the formatting for that requirement. Snaptain has an app for you to download to your cellphone, which will be instrumental in monitoring the camera's field of view, and direction you are aiming the drone’s camera. This is available in both the Apple app store and Google Play, for both iPhone and Android phones. There were several Snaptain drone apps to pick from, but I downloaded “Epic” as the instruction manual directed for the SP7100S. Also note in the app, there is a “beginner” slider switch, which I chose as appropriate for my skill level; it is not clear to me what this changes, and not stated in the manual, but I didn’t want to risk my drone to my inexperience). The hand controller has a spring loaded cradle to keep the cell phone at your fingertips while working the joysticks that control the drone while aloft. Having no prior drone flying experience, getting the hang of which joystick to use and push in which direction was a definite learning curve. Certainly the choice of a $250 drone over a $750 drone was ideal for a beginner. The Snaptain was quite forgiving in my simple demands. Powering up the drone and the controller are separate steps but well outlined in the instruction manual. You connect your phone to the drone via WiFi, so if you are close to your home in flight, you might want to set your phone to Airplane mode, so it won’t try to link to your home WiFi, leaving your drone an orphan. You need to go to your settings app on your phone and connect to the Snaptain signal. Personally I had a bit of trouble with the calibration steps – to calibrate the compass and the gyro. After a few false tries, powering down, starting over, it finally connected both, and subsequent start-ups were much quicker. The controller will connect to the GPS satellites to help guide the drone, especially important for the “return to home” function. Your # of satellites will vary, or course, with your location, and on the cloud cover/overcast status of your weather. Apparently, you can even trace out a flight path on a map, and have the drone fly the route chosen, but I did not get to that task. All of these steps are repeated at the startup for every flight. I have no prior drone experience, but assume this is true for all makes and models of drones. I’m sure it becomes automatic once you get the hang of it, but I still keep my instruction book open when taking off. My initial flight was in a wide open field adjacent to a soccer field (vacant of all people and dogs) in the next town north of us. The manipulation of the two joysticks control everything: starting up the rotors, then push up on the left stick for take off to your desired altitude. There is a button on the remote to engage an automatic takeoff or landing, but I stayed with manual flying to try to gain more experience with how the drone responds, while I was in open airspace and no obstructions, trees, power lines, etc. This 20-25 minute flight time: up and down and some easy circles took about 75% of my battery. My second flight, a few days later, was spent starting to learn the control and use of the on-board camera. Again, being a new pilot, I did not have any comparison to other drone images, other than having seen footage by professionals on movies and television commercials. So rather than rock stable panoramas, my footage was recognizable, but not pristine. When changing speed or direction, there was certainly some “wobble”, but that is as much a function of my tremor on the joysticks as the drone’s fault. Using the camera for stills and video does eat up battery life, and I was cautious to stay close and land early. I did not want to drain the battery and have it fall from the sky and risk damage to the drone. My final flight of this introduction was spent trying out the features like headless mode,”follow me”, and point of interest. Headless mode made the controls easier as a neophyte pilot. While in the headless mode, you only need the right stick to fly. I’m not quite sure why it is called “headless”, maybe just that you don’t need to think as much to fly. You switch into headless with a short push on the marked button outboard of the left joystick, and again to exit that mode. A long push, however, will initiate an Emergency Stop, which I assume causes the drone to drop to the ground, like a wounded bird, to the peril of the drone. The follow me mode is supposed to track the drone to follow the lock on the controller, but it did not seem to track me that closely or accurately. There was a moderate wind (6-8 mph gusts) that day, which could have been an additional challenge for the drone. The point of interest mode, which I did not test out, apparently lets you choose an item to focus on, and it will circle that set location and altitude, shooting in this area. You can obtain multiple photos and video, and then later edit and choose the ones that suit your purpose. The pictures the 7100S takes are certainly adequate for home/amateur use. The camera works better if it is a well-lit day. Videos would be improved with image stabilization, which I have come to appreciate with my iPhone. This actually was my second SP7100S– the first one came with one of the 4 rotor motors not working, which was obvious fairly early on, before any flights were attempted. I did not even try a lift off with only 3 motors. I contacted Snaptain customer support, and they shipped me a new one, along with a post paid label to return the defective one. It was a very satisfactory customer service interaction, and they were courteous and prompt in making things right. Overall, this was an excellent drone for a new drone pilot. I didn’t have a crash landing or drone stuck up in the upper branches of a maple tree, so consider it a successful introduction. I could have eased my experience by starting out with a “toy” model, of which there are countless options. Having the ability to have GPS return to home, and shooting hi-resolution photos and videos were crucial for my interests, so a lesser model would have been quickly relegated to the garage, and a wasted $100.

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  Posted 3 years ago by Josenieve